He Still Speaks Words of Love My relationship with God has grown over time as have many of my relationships. My relationship with Jerry grows daily – as long as he and I both put time and effort into it. With each day that goes by we seek to know each other better by listening and coming together. But sometimes it is easy to have doubts about the people in our lives – including God. I think that doubt can be a useful tool in your relationship with God if used properly. What I mean is this – doubt should be used as a type of questioning tool – a way to converse with God when He seems quiet or distant and when you don’t know where you stand. The proper way to use doubt is to first never compromise God’s faithfulness and the true essence of who He is. That requires that you know who He is first. (That is another post for another day.) Just over a year ago, driving home from church, Jerry and I had the same song in our heads. (We have never had the same word or message from God before.) The song was “When I Think of You” by Michael W. Smith. We thought it was strange that we both had that song in our heads and yet we had not heard it in awhile and it was not played at church. I felt like we needed to know more about this, so I pulled out the CD to see if there was something in the CD jacket that we needed to know. I found the reference to Zephaniah 3:17: "The Lord your God is with you. He is mighty enough to save you. He will take great delight in you. The quietness of his love will calm you down. He will sing with joy because of you." (New International Readers version - Copyright © 1996, 1998 by Biblica) At the time, I was struggling with the back to work blues. The next day I was scheduled to go back to work for the first time since Abby was born. This verse gave me great comfort. I felt like God was saying he was delighted with Jerry and me. It brought tears to my eyes! Who were we that God would speak to us in this way? What a wonderful gift! Fast forward to now. I’m finishing up One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. I’m also reading Crazy Love by Francis Chan. I’m at this stage in my relationship with God where I’m asking myself, what does it mean to really love God? Intellectually I love him, but I don’t think it has broken into the core of my being. I’m one of those people who need to “get it” intellectually before I get it at a deeper level. Crazy Love is challenging me to not be a lukewarm Christian. The book says that to be a Christian is at its very nature loving God as much as I love myself – relentlessly. I’m so.not.there. As I’m reading One Thousand Gifts, I’m pondering how after all this time how I just don’t get it. Ann is telling the reader how she went to Paris to learn how to “make love to God.” Makes ya blush a bit, right? Me too, because I don’t really get that. Yet everywhere in the Bible it says that we are the bride of Christ. Well, to be a bride, you have to be more than friends, right? There has to be a greater level of intimacy. So as she is retelling her journey – she watches the sun rise from the airplane and she realizes that God is singing His love song to her from Zephaniah 3:17. The same Zephaniah 3:17 where he spoke to Jerry and me a year ago. I put down the book and I sob. He won’t ever stop reminding me – this flawed, speck of dust in the cosmos – that he loves me. I can’t help but ask over and over, why? I will never understand. But the bottom line is this – He loves me, He delights in me. While I don’t yet understand the level of intimacy He is inviting me into, I still go forward seeking to know more.